Pure Love
by NxLFlamingKey
Summary: Lucy falls into a coma after a car accident. To Revive, the Reaper gives her 49 days to convince three people ( apart from her parents ) to shed genuine/ sincere tears for her to live. Betrayal? -Jerza, Gruvia and possibility of GrayZa
1. Chapter 1

Pure Love

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Summary:

Lucy falls into a coma after a car accident. To Revive, the Death Scheduler gives her 49 days to convince three people ( apart from her parents ) to shed genuine/ sincere tears for her to live.

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Disclaimer: Fairy Tail isn't mine, also Idea fully mine, Plot half mine~ okay? ^^

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**Chapter 1**

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From the top of the building a pretty boy Grim Reaper, or the Death Scheduler, playing a guitar, looking over his domain with a detached eye.

Down below, a traffic jam strands three young ladies in a cab, with an engagement ceremony fast approaching. The stressed- out bride- er, fiancée- to – be is about to lose it; Lucy Heartfilia has many nicknames, one of which is "crybaby," and she's about to prove its aptness here.

Averting disaster is her stalwart best friend, Lisanna Strauss, who urges Lucy and their friend Levy McGarden to make it on foot. When Lucy's heel breaks, it's Lisanna who gives up her flats and runs on in her stocking feet.

Elsewhere, an Architect works at his desk, only looking up when he is reminded that the engagement ceremony is approaching, Natsu Dragneel who dresses in his suit and heads towards the venue.

Natsu tugs nervously at his tie like a bachelor with cold feet. But no, it's a fake out: He bursts into the ceremony as it's just winding down.

The happy couple isn't greatly disturbed so there's no big drama here- at least we pan back to Natsu's uncomfortable and realize that no, he is not the fiancée. He's the guy who _wishes_ he were.

Lucy great Natsu with friendliness, but he coldly ignores her and focuses to Loke Celeste. Lucy is used to being snubbed but keeps trying because she wants to win Natsu over, but he's not having it. ( A/N: Like a puppy to his/ her owner )

Loke asked Natsu to hold Lucy's hand because she kept tripping over her dress, and Natsu stutters an excuse to avoid it. She's miffed at his rejection, but Natsu is in self-preservation mode, and just trying to get along with out being found out.

The only person to pick-up on something in Natsu's behavior is Lucy's father, who looks at him quizzically. Loke explains that they met he was studying for his MBA in States. Natsu is a high-school classmate of Lucy's, and "practically a genius" as an architect.

On the other end of a happy life, there is the poor, Erza Scarlet, who hunches in her tiny apartment eating a bowl of instant noodles for dinner, looking like all the life has been drained out of her eyes. She trudges lifelessly to her soul-sucking at a small convenience store, where she works in a dull gaze. Even when a customer tries to engage her with a friendly smile, she looks right through him and dismisses him.

Lucy's father is called away from the engagement ceremony with an upsetting call, and he stumbles home drunk that night. Guess the news must've been bad, because he urges the kids to marry right away — like, _this month_. They protest, but he reverse-psychologies them, asking, _So of a sudden you don't want to marry, is that it?_

Clearly there's some reason prompting them to hurry- Maybe in a financial matter, related to her father's investment, but he doesn't divulge it.

The hasty wedding isn't what Loke or Lucy had planned, but they dutifully go along with it, Loke makes his official proposal to seal the deal. Then, they call their wedding party for dinner that night, ( Note: Natsu acts distant towards Lucy, but happens to know all her food preferences. )

The happy couple reminisces about their first meeting, which spins us off into a flashback to a hiking trip that Lucy had gone on with Lisanna.

What started off sunny and invigorating had turned dark and rainy, and the girls had been separated in the woods. Loke had found her huddled and shivering in the woods, and carried her to safety and called an ambulance to tend to her.

Natsu is already hating being here at all, and as he listens to this romantic story, it's all he can do to will his head not to burst. He keeps his arms crossed grumpily and endures the adoring couple.

Everything Lisanna does and says is perfectly sweet. But she has an overcompensation thing going on, like she's trying to will herself to be happy for her friend, in the way that Natsu is trying to will himself not to shoot himself in aggravation.

The girls go through the wedding plans, with organized Levy on top of the to-do list. As an example of how sweet but dim Lucy is, she exclaims that her bridesmaids ought to wear the same wedding dress when they marry — ostensibly to save money, but kind of mind-numbingly self-absorbed, neh? But her friends are well aware of her cute, simple ways and laugh along with her.

Lisanna had until recently been Lucy's roommate, but upon the wedding, her old room will be turned into a study.

It's the dead of night (well past 3am) when Erza's convenience store is held up by two robbers wielding a knife. They demand money, but find her contained reaction a little unnerving. Seeing that she doesn't even flinch, one growls, "Do you wanna die?" She challenges him, "Stab me."

The cops arrive to arrest the failed thieves, and even the police officer tells Erza incredulously that she should've handed the money over to keep herself safe.

The boys meet up for an early-morning workout session, and Natsu asks Loke to relieve him of groomsman duties. We can surmise his reasoning for wanting out, but he's also got his reputation for indifferent detachment working in his favor, and Loke assumes he just finds such things tiresome. He lets his friend off the hook, and says that it was Lucy's affection for tradition that they had persuaded him to join them in the first place.

Loke recalls that Natsu had been intending to track down a woman once he came back to Japan — which suggests he's newly arrived — and says that it _shouldn't be so hard to find a person in such a tiny country_.

Natsu tries to avoid Lucy when he runs into her later, but she follows him and tries again to engage him. She explains that she wants all her and Loke's closest friends to be a part of their big day, and Natsu had a double claim — he's Loke's closest buddy, and also her old friend.

Natsu sets her straight, saying that they are NOT friends, thankyouverymuch, prompting Lucy to wonder if he's still holding a grudge from "that time." Whatever happened, it's clear that he IS still thinking of it, while Lucy scoffs that if anyone should be feeling bad over it, it should be her, not him.

Lucy was hurt by his rejection, and fiddles with her fingers in a recurring nervous tic. She tells her friends that Natsu really is a jerk, and they advise her to let go — why does she insist on calling Natsu a friend when he hates her? She sighs that as much as he can be a pain in the ass sometimes, she doesn't hate him.

Lucy is surprised to hear Loke call Natsu sensitive, but he tells her that Natsu has dealt with a lot of pain, like the proper drama hero he is.

* * *

~THE NEXT DAY ( MORNING )

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Lucy goes shopping for her bridesmaid's dresses, taking particular care to find a dress that'll look pretty on Lisanna, since she's picked out a groomsman to match her up with. She takes the dress with her to have her friend try it on.

Hot Reaper Boy speeds along on his motorcycle, on his way to a scheduled, uh, _appointment_. Pulling over, he consults his smartphone… er, _**smartdeathwatchdevice**_. He's got five minutes till the scheduled demise of a Mr. Death Scheduler, and settles back to wait.

At the same time, Erza stares dully at her calendar — okay, lady, you're starting to be a real downer — which is fixed on an old date: March 15, X784. She puts on a black dress, suggesting that she lost not only a loved one but also herself on that day.

Erza takes the bus to a particular location, carrying a desiccated rose, not noticing that she is passed by the Reaper or that she is being followed by a man.

She crouches by the road, next to a warning sign indicating a dangerous accident-prone area. A flashback takes her back to some time ago, when the bloodstain was fresh on the road. A young man's body had hit the ground here.

Making a sudden decision, Erza rashly steps into the busy road, directly into the path of an oncoming truck. She closes her eyes to await impact.

But a man dashes into traffic to spin her out of harm's way, and they hit the ground safely.

The truck, on the other hand, swerves to avoid her. What results is a multi-car pileup on the highway, which catches the Reaper by surprise — I bet he thought it'd be a lot easier figuring out where his body would end up, but now he's got a dozen cars to choose from. The Reaper sighs in frustration, just as the guy in front of him — stuck in traffic in his car — clutches his heart.

Lucy isn't initially caught up in this nightmare **wreckathon**, but when a motorcyclist skids in front of her, she swerves to avoid running him over… and that sends her into a truck, the force propelling her out the windshield.

Landing on the ground, her eyes flutter open and she gets to her feet, apparently _unharmed_. She looks around to get her bearings, glancing over at the nearby car — hers — where people yell at the young woman inside. **Which is her**.

Shock. Her real body is hunched over and bloody. Lucy tries to touch something, but her hands only ripple into the man in front of her, and nobody can hear her. Oddly enough, one dude looks straight at her, to her relief. But the next moment, he's gone.

Lucy gets into the ambulance with…herself…and watches her body failing to respond to revival attempts.

In the hospital, Erza's rescuer watches over her body. He's the kindly fellow who'd tried to smile at her at the convenience store the other night, which doesn't entirely explain his presence but suggests he may have been trying to gain her attention for a while now.

When she wakes up, he's gone, and she looks just as depressed as she did before. Perhaps even more so, since she's still alive.

Lucy watches as her parents and Natsu rush into the emergency room, distraught to see her lying prone and hooked up to machines. They break down as her body is wheeled into surgery, and Lucy screams out to them, but she's kept strictly on her side of the Great Divide — her voice goes unheard, and her touches are repelled by some cosmic mojo.

**Reaper Boy** walks through the hall, and Lucy remembers that he'd seen her at the accident site and chases after him. The rules of her condition establish that she cannot travel through solid objects, though, so she has to wait on the other side of a door until a living person opens it for her.

She joins the Reaper in another hospital room, where he awaits his time to step in. Spotting her, Reaper Boy gripes, "Lucy Heartfilia! Why don't you pay attention when you drive?!"

But before he can talk to her, he's got a job to do. The man in the hospital bed flatlines, and his soul literally leaves the body just as the doctor pronounces him dead.

Reaper greets Dead Man and leads him away, where a celestial portal opens up with a wave of the Reaper's hand. Dead Man steps inside the elevator, on his way to the _After_.

The Reaper indicates that she should follow him, and he takes her to the rooftop for a chat. She asks if he's the Angel of Death/Grim Reaper, but he's indignant to be called such a passé term: "I'm a _Scheduler_." His job is to be there when a person's scheduled lifetime is up.

She asks if she's dead, which he confirms. Although his work today hadn't been about her, thanks to the accident, the plans had a last-minute hiccup: "It's the case we Schedulers hate most — when our Schedules get messed up!"

Well, sooor-rrrry Mr. Snippy! It's too bad that death was so _inconvenient_ to you.

Lucy wasn't scheduled to die today, and Mr. Not-A-Reaper explains that every so often, a troublemaker arises to mess things up. Like today's attempted suicide.

If there's anything worse than dying, it's finding out that you weren't _supposed_ to die. Lucy clings to hope that he'd made a mistake, insisting futilely that she can't be dead.

And true, Lucy's not dead _yet_, not technically. But she is as good as gone, and the Scheduler shows her what he means by taking her to her hospital room.

Her friends burst in, in shock and grief, and listen in horror as the doctor declares her body in a vegetative state; she's "practically brain-dead."

The Scheduler tries to lead Lucy away. She freaks out, thinking he's about to guide her to the hereafter, she tries to run. But you can't cheat death, and there's no escaping him.

He tells her he won't force her on that elevator to heaven. Which means, she'll have to decide to get on it herself.

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So he lays out the deal:

**In his time as a Scheduler, he's had two previous cases like hers, where the people died as a result of someone else's unexpected action. She has two options: Either decide that she's ready to move on to the afterlife anyway, or find three people in the world who truly love her. This she can prove in the form of tears shed while thinking of her.**

The rationale is: **Those tears indicate that this is a life with enough value to grant another chance.**

* * *

The Scheduler adds caveats — _family members are excluded_ — but Lucy is thrilled, since this plan seems pretty easy to her. After all, her hospital room was host to more than three tears already.

But the Scheduler smirks — not all tears are created equal. She must collect three _pure _tears. To illustrate, he takes her to a funeral and instructs her to observe carefully the tears of the attendees.

The Scheduler describes what she's seeing: That lady sheds tears of pity, that one is crying in consolation to herself, and the other lady is forcing them out of courtesy. When the tears drop, they dissipate into a puff of color, indicating that they're not "pure" tears of love. By contrast, pure tears of love burst into a flare of white mist, as demonstrated by one funeral-goer. That woman, therefore, truly loved the deceased. Too bad she's her sister, which would negate her tears in Lucy's case.

On the other hand, the deceased's husband cries green tears — they're sad, but still tinged with hope for his own future. The Scheduler tsks-tsks as he looks over the other color-tainted tears in the room, sighing, _"Humans sure are complicated."_

Still, Lucy is confident she can accomplish this in her allotted 49 days, and accepts the task.

Next, the Scheduler takes her to the convenience store and briefs her on the profile of the woman whose body she is allowed to use: Erza is 26, grew up in an orphanage, and graduated from university after studying hotel and tourism. She worked in a Seoul hotel for two years, was unemployed for a year, then had a string of convenience store gigs.

Lucy doesn't approve of her Body — that disheveled hairstyle, and those clothes! — but the Scheduler tells her that this woman is connected to her. He doesn't clarify what Erza's critical role was in determining Lucy's own fate.

Lucy is instructed to act only after Erza falls asleep, so she waits in Erza's dingy apartment till her host comes home from her graveyard shift.

Once Erza falls asleep, Lucy hovers over her as her soul is absorbed into the body. Moments later, Erza awakens — or should I say, Lucy's Soul In Erza's Body. ( A/N: We need a name for this. Lucy Scarlet? Lucy Soul? )

In any case, Lucy's Soul gets up in her unfamiliar body, and acquaints herself with her new (temporary) home. Trembling in excitement, she declares tearily, "I'm…Lucy Heartfilia!"

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NxL: And here my friend is Chapter 1!

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_**The one who saved Erza, was Gray~ ^^**_

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**DON'T FORGET TO REVIEW MINNA!**


	2. Chapter 2

Pure Love

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Summary:

Lucy falls into a coma after a car accident. To Revive, the Death Scheduler gives her 49 days to convince three people ( apart from her parents ) to shed genuine/ sincere tears for her to live.

* * *

Disclaimer: Fairy Tail isn't mine, also Idea fully mine, Plot half mine~ okay? ^^

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**Chapter 2**

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Lucy wakes up in Erza's body (and thank GOD for that), and cries in shock and glee at having corporeal form again. Not that this is the body she'd have chosen for herself. She takes a good look at Erza's bruised face, torn clothes, and unwashed hair, and wonders if she's a gangster. _Heh. Maybe she is a gangster… meh~_

She goes to the world's _dirtiest _bathroom to wash up (with nary a bottle of shampoo or conditioner in sight, to her utter horror) and wanders outside. She whines that she has to wander the streets looking like a _hobo_.

Reaper Boy suddenly appears behind her, but once she gets over the initial scare, Lucy greets him cheerily with, "Hey it's you! Scheduler!" I think he's more taken aback by her, truth be told, because he's used to being scary, but she's not at all frightened of him. I think I'm gonna like this _Soul-Reaper_ relationship.

She eagerly tells him that she's Lucy Heartfilia, which flares his quick temper. He reminds her that he told her the Three Rules just last night, and she's already breaking one of them. She catches herself right away, and promises not to break them, _she swears_.

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~FLASHBACK

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In flashback, Lucy find out the rules ( A/N: and YAY for a drama that's clear about the rules ): (1) She cannot, under any circumstances, tell anyone that she is Lucy Heartfilia. Consequence: _express trip on the Elevator of Doom._

(2) She can only use Erza's body when she's asleep. That'd be from 10 in the morning till midnight, since Erza works the _graveyard _shift. Reaper Boy: "You have a double-digit IQ, don't you? I _said_, you have to return to Erza's house by midnight every night, and not a minute later." Consequence: _for every minute that she's late, that's one day out of 49 that gets shaved off_. "Such a Snippy Scheduler" Lucy thought to herself.

(3) She's to earn any money she needs herself. "Nice…now I have to work?" Lucy thought again. "Plus, Lucy's got a perfect princess complex that's going to make this fun" The scheduler imagines her, and in the end brush it off. He reminds her that she's not to harm Erza in any way while she's borrowing her body. _Check._

Lucy promises to follow the rules, and adds that she's got that three genuine tears thing in the bag. She's thought about it, and there's going to be at least five or six people who really love her, "so…is there some sort of incentive plan whereby extra tears equals extra years on her life?" She wondered. Hahaha. Reaper Boy scoffs at the gall of one delusional princess.

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~END OF FLASHBACK

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He hands her a cell phone, with a scary voice counting down her remaining time. It also has a panic button ( A/N: in the shape of a skull, natch) to call him, _only in absolute emergencies_. ( A/N: Heh, that button is going to be SO abused. And…can I get one of those? IN MY FREAKIN' DREAMS! )

He also gives her a loan to get her started: 49 dollars, of course, which she has to pay back later. He gets on his motorcycle to ride off in style, and she asks why he rides a bike if he can teleport. Good question. He tells her that it's one of the ways he enjoys his _reaper life_.

She tries to hitch a ride, but with a happy sneer, he reminds her that a reaper does not get involved in human affairs. I'm thinking that's going to change for you, and that you're going to hate it…which means I'm going to LOVE IT.

Lucy decides to take a taxi to the hospital ( NxL: way to blow your money, princess), and watches from outside her room as Loke and her parents sit by her bedside. She flashes back to when they re-met, by coincidence again a week after the mountain incident.

She apologizes for putting him through all this, and then remembers her tear necklace. She looks back at him, and he's upset, but not crying. She assumes that he's cried so much overnight, that there must not be any tears left.

She spends more money buying shampoo and lip gloss, which is just going to piss off Reaper Boy to no end. Although I'm thinking he probably spends a good deal of money on beauty products himself, judging by the looks of him. ( A/N: Reaper Boy is also a character in Fairy Tail, don't guess, LOL, you'll spoil xD )

She then heads over to the girls' apartment, where Lisanna is too upset to get out of bed, and Levy is trying to talk some optimism into her. Lucy listens at the door but can't hear anything, and wonders if maybe they're with Natsu. ( NxL: Do I smell Jealousy? )

Natsu is alone, brooding with a trinket in his clenched fist. He thinks back to their high school days when they first met, as a city boy who gets transplanted and bullied, and the local girl who rules the town because of her daddy. She _cluelessly _"saves" him from a fight, leading to adorable exasperation. ( A/N: Lucy saves Natsu? Oh My )

Back in the present, Natsu's broody times leads to a bout of head-desking ( NxL: And I do Face Palming ), so he decides to go to work. I can't tell if this place he owns is a café or an Italian restaurant, but basically, they make pasta and serve wine, so I'll go with _Italian joint_. And what's a **'genius'** architect doing as a restaurateur anyway? _Whatever, Drama._

Lucy arrives looking for her friends, and smiles when she sees Natsu, but remembers that she's not…herself. She realizes how hungry she is, and orders her favorite dish, scarfing it down like a pro. But when she goes to pay, she comes up short. Well, that didn't take you long.

The waitress shames her, and Lucy insists that she didn't realize she'd spent all her money, and that she was just so hungry. Natsu sees all this and tells them to just send her on her way.

Outside, she says to herself that she'll be sure to repay Natsu for the gesture once she's back to life, and sits down at the bus stop… only she just now remembers that she's _completely broke_. Slow on the uptake, this one.

She scans the jobs section in the paper, realizing that there's nothing she's qualified to do, and ends up right back in front of Natsu to ask for a job. He dismisses her since he's not hiring, and well, she hasn't exactly left a great first impression. But she begs for just a temporary position for _48 days…no, just a week, even_.

He looks at her, bruised face and dirty clothes, and notices her nervous tick which instantly reminds him of Lucy. It tugs at his conscience, so he hands her two large bills, saying that it's instead of the job.

She looks up at him angrily, flaring up as she tells him that her daddy told her _never to accept handouts_. She stomps away, offended and hurt.

But Natsu sends a waiter to chase after her ( NxL: too prideful to chase after her himself, of course ) to give her a chance. He offers her a job from 11am to midnight, at 4 dollars an hour. _Okay, that's like slave labor_. She jumps for joy and thanks him, and then sheepishly has to ask to borrow bus fare.

She trudges home, wondering why she's so tired. _Probably because you're using a body that's supposed to be sleeping right now_. At home, she wonders where she'll hide the shampoo, and then discovers the boxes full of pretty things, from Erza's life pre-accident.

Her eyes brighten at the sight of non-hobo belongings, and she stashes her goods in there. It's early yet _before she turns into a pumpkin_, but she decides to lie down, and the second she goes to sleep, Lucy's soul pops right out of Erza's body.

Once she's out of her host body, she's surprised to find that she's not tired at all anymore. _Side effect of death?_ She tries to get out, but finds her incorporeal self quite useless at opening doors.

So what does she do? She uses her panic button of course. I mean, it was YOUR mistake in giving her that thing, you do realize, right? Reaper Boy is busy getting his rock on at a club, when his phone goes off. Apparently a reaper's cell phone vibrates at a frequency reserved for torture devices, because it physically pains him until he answers it. So, mystical leash he can't ignore? Even better.

He appears, wondering what the emergency is, to which she cheerily asks, "Can you open the door?" Lucy asked. His face just says it all: A Handsome *cough* Sarcastic tone, wide eye, who was about to break-down, or poker fice, or even better 'DERP'. An Overly-Exasperated Reaper face. He asks, voice dripping with sarcasm, "that Lucy couldn't _possibly_ have called him here for something so ridiculous as opening a door, could you?" The Reaper boy asked.

Lucy thinks she's quite used to being considered _stupid_, so she just explains that it's an emergency _to her_, since she can't open it. And why not, she wonders, since ghosts and such can move through spaces, or so she thought.

"Well, it's emergency to me, since I can't open it. And Why Not?, for all I know ghosts and such can move through spaces, or so as I think" Lucy retorted.

He explains, as if to a five-year old, that she isn't _quite_ dead, really, so that'd be why she can't pass through things. She remembers at the hospital, that some guy passed right through her. He tells her that it's because to those people, she's considered dead. _Interesting. Difference of perception?_ That means the rules are _bendy_.

Reaper Boy stirs, and Lucy asks him to take her out of there, since she doesn't really want to spend time with someone who's still a stranger to her. He reminds her that Schedulers don't get involved in people's lives, and that as a 49er, it's her job to adjust to life with her host. "_And then poof, he's gone." Lucy said, as he vanished in front of her._

* * *

Lucy crouches in the corner and watches as Erza goes through her depressing routine of instant noodles before heading out to work. They stand at the bus stop across the street from each other, in a nice contemplative moment that mirrors their loneliness.

Lucy goes to the hospital where Loke continues to watch over her comatose body. He asks aloud what he should do, and she asks him just to cry, and not hold it back.

"Loke, Just cry, just don't hold it back" She said.

Meanwhile, Erza's mystery secret admirer comes to the store to buy a pack of his usual cigarettes, and he takes the opportunity to ask if she's feeling okay. He tells her to go see a doctor if she's feeling dizzy or anything. She realizes that he must be the guy who saved her that day, and just blankly asks him how much the hospital bill was.

He wonders that she doesn't recognize him, since he comes in there every day and buys the same thing, every day. But that would require her to be awake and take notice of the world around her, which she clearly hasn't done in years. She insists on paying him back and asks that he not interfere anymore. She hands him some money and he agrees to come back with the hospital bill next time. ( NxL: I Notice a Gray x Erza, any fans? )

* * *

The next day, Lucy wakes up in Erza's body, and washes up to her heart's content. She even happily discovers a blow dryer and pretty clothes in the boxes, and shows up for work looking like a new person. ( A/N: Natsu's restaurant is named Fairy Tail )

They're surprised to see her cleaned up, but even more surprised to find that she is the world's worst waitress. Natsu just watches her, mouth agape and eyes wide.

Back at the hospital, Layla Heartfilia has a nervous breakdown, and Jude Heartfilia yells at Loke to go home and wash up, while he takes the next watch. Lisanna and Levy come over to take care of Layla, and Lisanna wanders into Lucy's room, crying when she sees their old pictures and her wedding dress. _Too bad it's not in Lucy's presence, because I'm dying to know what color her tears are._

Lucy starts nodding off at work, until Loke arrives, asking for a drink. She perks up instantly, being overly attentive to him, which Natsu picks up on right away. Heh, I know it's a sad situation, but it's still kind of amusing at the same time, since Natsu is in that hyper-aware-and-competitive mode with Loke, which he's been repressing for some time now.

She's also clearly overstepping bounds, but can't help herself because it's Loke. Natsu sends her home, but she ends up waiting outside for a full hour, until Loke gets carried out of the restaurant and put into a car.

She rushes over to help Natsu carry him, and the look on his face is like, _what the hell, lady?_ He tells her that it's his friend's fiancé, and is about two words from firing her, when she realizes how late it is and rushes off in the middle of his sentence. Heh.

Loke goes home and angsts, and I'm getting the vibe that there's more to his grief than grief. I could be reading into it, but he seems to be feeling guilty, which means there's a good chance that whatever straying he's about to do is…already done?

Meanwhile Natsu shows up at the hospital, and mumbles insults at her for just lying there when she used to strong-arm the whole town. See, THIS is real grief, the grief that I'm used to, where people yell and then cry and then laugh and then yell again. He leaves her a single pink rose in a vase, and walks out.

Lucy arrives, with little notice of Natsu, and cries when she sees her Father sleeping by her bedside. She sits next to him, trying to offer words of comfort as she puts her hand on his, across the great divide.

The next day at Fairy Tail, Lucy spills water on a customer, and Natsu steps in to clean it up, and drags her away. He shows her basic things like water-pouring and setting a table, which she marvels that he's awfully good at.

…Only SHE's supposed to be good at them too, since Erza's resume clearly states that she worked at the Seoul Hotel, which should technically make her better than all of them. _Whoops._

She stammers that she got into an accident and suffers from amnesia, of the task-oriented kind, where you forget how to do certain things. He doesn't believe a word she's saying, but she insists he can look it up on the internet, adding quietly that "It happens a lot in dramas". Heh.

* * *

Natsu thinks she's got pants on fire, so he tells her to go get proof of her employment history from the hotel…in an hour. She rushes off, after collecting yesterday's wages for cab fare, and asks HR for the document. One of the girls there recognizes Erza, but Lucy just rushes out of there, unable to acknowledge any connection.

She watches the servers at the café downstairs, and wonders what happened to Erza if she used to work in such a nice hotel. She turns to go, when she sees Loke walk by toward the elevator.

She just smiles and follows him, but doesn't catch the elevator in time. She watches it go up and wonders what he's doing here, as the elevator goes past the restaurant floor. She doesn't really think much of it, until she turns and sees Lisanna standing next to her.

( NxL: I KNEW IT. Gah, they've been cheating on her for god knows how long.! Meep! Jk~ hahaha )

She's startled, and then notes warily that Loke has gotten off the elevator on the 18th floor…where there are nothing but rooms. She follows Lisanna into the elevator, and pushes the button for 20 and waits… Lisanna pushes 18.

Scared but unable to tear herself away, she follows Lisanna and watches from across the corridor, as Lisanna rings the doorbell…

_***Ding Dong***_

…and Loke comes out to pull her inside.

She doesn't know what's coming the whole time, but that moment is done so well. The shock puts Lucy into a tailspin, as she stumbles down the hall toward the room. She looks at the door, and then all of a sudden it triggers her memory.

The day of the accident, when she had run out of the dress shop wearing the bridesmaid's dress to show Lisanna, she had _already_ discovered the two of them, across the intersection in Loke's car. He was tenderly kissing her hand, not knowing that Lucy was seeing the whole thing.

And THAT's the reason why she got into the accident that day, because she was frazzled and trying to gather her thoughts, when that bike wiped out in front of her.

Back in the present, it all comes flooding back to her, and she falls to the ground.

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NxL: Oh? Loke and Lisanna? ( Your Argument is Invalid ), That's the reason Lucy had that ACCIDENT! if ever ytime i put a story, and left at 3,000+ words that would be great!

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**DON'T FORGET TO REVIEW MINNA! ^^**


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